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Auditors investigating price tag of Defense personnel reforms
Congressional auditors are investigating the cost of implementing the Pentagon's new personnel system, in response to a request from four senators.
The Government Accountability Office is looking into the Defense Department's budget for training, communications, technology and other infrastructure needed to implement the National Security Personnel System, said Derek Stewart, GAO's director of defense capabilities and management.
The Pentagon has floated a rough estimate of $158 million, but employee groups call that figure a gross underestimation. Stewart said GAO wants to make sure Congress has an accurate idea of the cost so it can be assured that Defense is allotting enough money for the massive human resources overhaul.
"How can the Congress be assured that DoD is going to devote the necessary resources to implement and maintain the system effectively and efficiently, given all the other competing demands in the Pentagon?" Stewart said. "What I want somebody to show me is there's a commitment to the resources to make this happen. That can be a budgetary line item; it can be a pot of money that's dedicated to NSPS just sitting off to the side with a fence around it."
The review comes at the request of Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., chairman and ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman and ranking member of the committee's Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia.
"It is rare that we get a request signed by a chairman and a ranking member of a full committee and subcommittee," Stewart said. "So that created an importance for us to look at NSPS cost."
Nanci Langley, deputy staff director for the Democrats on the subcommittee, said that Akaka, for one, is not convinced there are adequate resources to fund the reforms.
"All the signatories agree that adequate resources are needed for the system to be effective, fair and transparent," Langley said.
GAO elevated the senators' request to the level of a "Comptroller General Authority" because of the high level of congressional interest in the issue. That designation will give the auditors more authority to set their own timeline for the research and will allow them to gather and disseminate more information during the process. Stewart said his group hopes to have its work complete by the fall.
NSPS program executive officer Mary Lacey said her office was not aware the GAO review was taking place, but that officials there look forward to working with auditors.
Stewart said much of his group's work will involve visiting each Defense Department component to determine its budget forecast for NSPS -- a task no one within the department has completed to lawmakers' satisfaction. He said he believes there is a valid explanation for why a more concrete and -- in the opinion of many -- accurate estimate was never gathered by the Pentagon itself.
"There is an NSPS program office, but that program office doesn't fit neatly under any other office within the Pentagon," Stewart said. "Well, then, whose responsibility is it to roll up the cost? It's not the program office; their responsibility is to design the program and get it implemented."
Stewart said his study most likely will not examine the cost of paying employees under the new system, but his auditors will keep their eyes open for any concerns about that.
COMMENTS
- First a inquiry; from what I can see the proposal was printed on a Monday, February 14 2005 with comments to be received no later than 16 March 2005 all of which allowed for 22 work days with which to respond? Not counting any lost time to actually process and distribute the printed material. This fact alone gives raise to many questions and concerns. I concur with many of the observations already posted. Co-workers and I are becoming further demoralized daily with the increased administrative workload that NSPS itself places on each employee. It is frustrating to no longer simply perform your duties; you must now endeavor to quantify everything you do simply to populate an evaluation with quantity not necessarily quality regardless of the importance of the tasks performed. There are many people doing many things that are virtually impossible to quantify which will now suffer under this system. Any evaluation process has the potential to be abused. It is not so much the system itself as it is the people using it; just as with any tool. However, NSPS is simply chock-full of possibilities for abuse. It is simply a poorly designed, inefficient tool. A prime example is the Risk Management requirements for our soldiers to simply take leave. The process requires numerous pages of documentation that, though well intentioned, will have no actual affect on the manner in which the soldier will drive, yet this is no doubt a quantifiable bullet for someone’s NSPS evaluation. One that will gain a high rating but upon closer scrutiny, the individuals that bought off on this practice should be flogged for the waste fraud and abuse. Additionally, where is the actual “National Security” aspect of this bill of goods? Please delineate for us what the “Security” benefits are. I predict that in five years, we will see greater misuses and iniquities throughout DOD with regard to the pay and hiring of our government employees. This will greatly benefit those that wish to further the contractors and line their personal pockets than ever beginning to benefit the workers. Is there no one in the system, with enough integrity and the requisite fortitude to please inform the king that his new clothes are nothing more than a sham! Sam Posted August 31, 2007 11:11 AM
- Dear Robert M., You are correct in your assumptions about bad managers and the old boys' club. I used to work for the Navy. There was a GM-14 there that screwed up two different departments, putting them hopelessly in the red, while demoralizing both groups and getting the productive to leave. He should have been fired, but alas, he is transferred to another department and made "co-branch head", where he warms the chair until the department is split up and he gets another branch head position (i.e., another chance to screw up), all the while making well into six figures under the NSPS program that got instituted for the managers and administrative types. Discouraged? You should be. And yet, the people that don't do anything wrong but still manage to p*** someone higher up off get forced out, as I have been. I'm just glad my step increases didn't go to fund this guy's raises, as it would have been if my labor category was under NSPS. Fed Up GovExec.com reader Posted February 23, 2006 1:39 PM
- WRT to the last post, I'm afraid that the instigators of NSPS knew exactly what they were doing when they came up with this brainstorm. It wasn't a mistake as far as they are concerned. Their long-term goal was to permanently reduce their obligation to the civil service public by making it easier to get rid of people they don't like, and to make pay raises optional so there would be more money to fund their favorite spoils people and projects. At first they simply hoped to push it through before the unions and thinking civil service had a chance to object. Now they are managing they way they always managed -- win by ignoring the opposition and keep pushing for what you want, even if you have to break the law to do it. Think of all major reforms of the past, like changing from the CSRS to the FERS system. At first, when they couldn't convince the majority that it was a "good idea" to switch to a system where you retire on your own money, after awhile they just whacked everybody on the head and made FERS law. Ahhh, history. If only the younger civil servants could remember. Dis-gruntled. GovExec.com reader Posted February 23, 2006 11:04 AM
